Martha Argerich & Nelson Freire ‎- Salzburg: Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel (2009)

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Martha Argerich & Nelson Freire ‎- Salzburg: Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel (2009)

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Pianists Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire are stupendous virtuosos, and there's nothing in this recording of their 2009 Salzburg recital of staggeringly difficult works they cannot play. They know each other so well as old duo piano partners that their playing is stunning in its unity, but their distinctive individuality also comes across. What's most impressive about this recital is how completely Argerich and Freire have made this music their own. Brahms' Haydn Variations sound freer and fresher, more playful, and more profound than ever. Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances are thrillingly rhapsodic, rapturous, and dramatic. Schubert's Grand Rondeau is more lyrical, intimate, and graceful than usual, and Ravel's La Valse more ecstatic and apocalyptically over-the-top frightening than in any comparable recordings, including Argerich's own earlier releases. Captured in wonderfully clear yet wholly present digital sound, the performances on this disc will be compulsory listening for anyone who loves music, any music.

Review by James Leonard, Allmusic.com

Save for the Schubert Rondo all of the works featured on this August 3, 2009 Salzburg duo recital already figure in Martha Argerich’s “official” discography, including studio and live versions of La Valse from 1982 with Nelson Freire, plus two previous recordings of the Haydn Variations and Symphonic Dances. Not that any of that matters, because this gorgeously engineered release reveals Argerich and Freire on staggering pianistic, musical, and ensemble form, from the impeccable chord balances in the Haydn Variations theme to La Valse’s furious yet breathtakingly controlled climaxes. The two pianists shade Brahms’ subtle cross-rhythmic effects in the Fifth and Eighth variations with effortless aplomb, while their vivid, perpetually supple Rachmaninov embraces such a wide spectrum of dynamics and colors that you hardly miss the composer’s large orchestra.

These words equally apply to La Valse, which far surpasses the pianists’ earlier attempts in both tonal allure and unrelenting diablerie. The duo’s fleet, assiduously paced, organically singing A major Rondo bodes well for future Argerich/Freire Schubertian explorations, should they wish to further expand their duo repertoire. Maybe one day we’ll hear the encore that Bernhard Neuhoff refers to in his booklet notes! This release defines piano heaven on earth.

Review by Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

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Martha Argerich & Nelson Freire ‎- Salzburg: Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel (2009)

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With musical elder-statesmanship comes the opportunity to revisit past repertoire and make new, potentially definitive records of one’s interpretations. Martha Argerich, with her longtime friend and duet-partner Nelson Freire, does just that, offering a disc of her two-piano party pieces. The Ravel she has already recorded with Freire, back in 1982; the Rachmaninov with Nicolas Economou the following year; and the Brahms with Polina Leschenko at Lugano in 2005. She’s also recorded all three works with Alexandre Rabinovitch at various times for Teldec. Comparisons, though, are somewhat otiose as these are, like all of Argerich’s music-making, performances in and of themselves, alive in the moment of creation. She delights nowadays in surrounding herself with like-minded chamber collaborators, challenging them (and herself) to ever greater feats of technique and expression.

How many times have we all heard two-piano performances of the Brahms St Antoni Variations that open with the players out of sync, making it sound like a child’s piano lesson? Argerich and Freire naturally, effortlessly put such solecisms to flight: as the slightly star-struck annotator writes, they “trust in their ears – and in the inner pulse of the music, in their shared delight in music-making and in the spark that passes between them”. After this chaste, almost didactic opening, the ensuing variations surge, muse, scamper; in the Poco presto variations we appreciate why Schoenberg admired Brahms so deeply; the pregnancy of the coda builds inexorably to its triumphant catharsis.

Rachmaninov’s own virtuoso transcription of his Symphonic Dances (in which the players swap roles, so Freire takes the top line) demonstrates that two pianos can be (almost) as versatile as a romantic-size orchestra: of course, the full palette of woodwind colours is not available even to the 176-key two-Steinway behemoth; but Freire and Argerich tint and shade the music with the skill of a master orchestrator. The Symphonic Dances’ ghostly waltz finds its image amplified and refracted in Ravel’s nightmare scenario (Argerich on top once more), a thunderous climax to proceedings, echoed in the (hitherto preternaturally quiet) audience’s explosive applause.

Providing repose among these three concert pieces is Schubert’s very late (June 1828) Grand Rondeau in A major, for which the two players nuzzle up on one piano. Once again, in music that can sound dry and four-square in the wrong hands, Freire (primo) and Argerich show that theirs are indubitably the right hands, giving this characteristically modest but expansive piece expressive shape and structure, and in the process shaving almost two minutes off the equally recommendable 1978 performance by Christoph Eschenbach and Justus Frantz.

This is a souvenir of what must have been a special evening at the Grosses Festspielhaus; but it’s also so much more than that. To hear two musicians of this stature at the height of their re-creative powers is never less than thrilling and thought-provoking, and gratitude is due to DG for thinking to travel down from Hamburg with their microphones to capture the event in such realistic sound.

Review by Gramophone

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Martha Argerich & Nelson Freire ‎- Salzburg: Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel (2009)

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Martha Argerich & Nelson Freire ‎- Salzburg: Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninov, Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel (2009)

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